Opinion
RANDOM THOUGHTS: Relaxing on the ferry crossings
Am I the only person who believes we move at too fast a pace? Americans have been described as demanding all things immediately. Poets offer the advice “take time to smell the roses,” to slow down. Instead the market responds with a great variety of items to answer the demand of those unwilling to wait. Instant food, communication and on and on, all are accessed by turning a switch or pushing a button.
Those thoughts were generated as I researched early transportation for this column. The very earliest settlers in this country, the Indian people, moved through the wilderness on foot and left well trodden paths. Those paths eventually were widened as the new breed of settlers traveled with wagons. All went well until they encountered bodies of water.
It was the introduction of the ferry that solved that problem. The mighty Savannah River divided the people of South Carolina and Georgia. It flowed 314 miles from the mountains to the ocean with no way for people to cross until May 1790 when Thomas Shockley purchased one acre of riverbank for use as a ferry landing. This became the oldest documented ferry on the upper Savannah but it was followed by five more ferry landings. By 1983 they were all gone, covered by water, but they had served the people of the two states well.
At one time Tennessee had 1,000 ferries because there is so much water across the state there was not a way to travel without a ferry. In 1807 a ferry was established in Rhea County northeast of Dayton, at a shallow area of the Tennessee River which Cherokees and later early settlers used as a crossing.
The Old Washington ferry was followed two years later by a town with the same name. Because of the ferry the town grew as a commercial center and history says it was almost named the state capital. The final blow came when the people voted in 1889 to name Dayton the county seat recognizing that the tracks of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad’s route to Chattanooga passed through that town.
Old Washington’s influence shrank but not the Old Washington ferry landing. It was still carrying about 200 cars a day in 1996, was the last ferry operating on the Tennessee River and was on the National Historic Register. The end came on Sept. 17, 1996 after the new Highway 30 bridge, linking Meigs and Rhea counties, opened.
Even though the ferry saved traveling time it offered a pleasant bonus. Passengers had time to relax and enjoy nature’s beauty as they were carried across the water.
Ferries were the beginning but in 1817 New York’s Gov. DeWitt Clinton proposed building the Erie Canal. It was a joke to many and was called “Clinton’s Ditch.” It took eight years of hard labor with shovels, axes and picks but it opened in 1825 and to many became the Eighth Wonder of the World.
The 350-mile canal linked Lake Erie with Buffalo at one end and Toledo, OH at the other. On July 4, 1825 Ohio’s Gov. Morrow turned the first spadeful of dirt for the Miami and Erie Canal which would eventually connect Toledo and Cincinnati. Three years later the first section linking Dayton and Cincinnati was completed. Today’s I-75 is the best way to trace the route of the long gone canal.
Water routes lasted a short time but soon railroads replaced them followed by automobiles, airplanes and finally interstates. All this progress added noise and pollution along with speed to a once quiet world with its many natural beauties.
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